4 - “Dialogue” with Yerushalmi

Summary

Dear Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi,

For many years – long before the publication of your book, Freud's Moses, I have been deeply fascinated by The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion. As you well know, until the appearance of your own perceptive study, much of the discussion of Freud's last book has been highly polemical, and has not been very illuminating. Hostile critics, and even sympathetic readers, have tended to be dismissive. There has been a sharp critique of Freud's anthropological and ethnographic claims; and his historical reconstruction has been ridiculed as a “pure phantasy” with little (if any) objective evidence to support his claims. Subsequent research by historians, biblical scholars, Egyptologists, anthropologists, and ethnologists have seriously questioned many of his historical claims. Some commentators have tried to put Freud “on the couch,” wildly speculating about his unconscious motives for writing such a scandalous book. Even those who have been most dedicated to Freud have written about the Moses book with a certain uneasy embarrassment – as if, at best, we should acknowledge that this is the work of an old man who was past his creative prime. I do not have to rehearse this depressing history of commentary and speculation because you have perceptively discussed it. Every reader of The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion (and every student of Freud) is indebted to you for raising the level of intellectual discussion – and for much more. You have brought your masterly knowledge of Jewish history and Jewish tradition to bear on the discussion.